The South America Crop Report for January 10, 2016

[patrick83954]

This week's South America Crop Report covers Argentina's corn planting rebound, Brazil's 1,700% increase in soybeans coming to port, and Uruguay's summer crop conditions. 

The South America Crop Report for January 10, 2016

Patrick Archer

Farms UY

[sw363535]

"soybeans which will rise 1,700% to 1.68 million tons in the first two months of the year"

That is bad journalism..... Sin-sationalism at it's best.   Article never tells what the comparison is to reach the claimed increase.....  Increase from previous two months when beans are not available?  That might be the case and is probably a normal change...

Normally expected annual exports would be around 45 million so is 1.68 million tons during harvest significant??

[sw363535]

With 15.9 million metric tons shipped in April and May of 2015,  1.68 million metric tons sounds like a short number for a two month period......

And a 1700% increase sounds like a problem with math.

[WCMO]

Maybe math works differently in S. America 😉

[patrick83954]

I believe the author from Reuters was citing a report from Williams Shipping Agency showing soybeans coming to Brazilian ports in Jan/Feb 2016 compared to Jan/Feb 2015...

"A previsão atual para embarques em janeiro e fevereiro é de 1,68 milhão de toneladas, alta de 1.700 por cento ante o registrado nos line-ups de um ano atrás."

Here is a link to the full article and Williams' news feed.

[WCMO]

Looks like my Google translator is changing a decimal point in 1.700 in original text, to a comma, resulting in 1,700.  So the actual translation would be 1.7%, instead of 1700%, right?

[patrick83954]

I believe in most Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries, thousands are separated by periods and fractions are separated by commas, so

SP/PT           EN

1.700%    =   1,700%

US$2,20  =    S2.20

In Mexico, the convention is the same as in the US and Canada, but in most South America countries like Brazil it's reversed.

[sw363535]

Thanks a bunch Patrick,

That makes it make sense somewhat, but why do they need to take 1.7% to the thousandth level of 1.700%  other than knowing it will look huge in the US with that comma...?.  

1.7% increase to 1.68 MMT is insignificant.  Except for a little more in an already crowded port...